


Skin & Bones

by nicasio_silang



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 2014, Alternate Universe - Canon, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-09
Updated: 2012-05-09
Packaged: 2017-11-05 01:16:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/400841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nicasio_silang/pseuds/nicasio_silang
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Now it was just this. The body between them. One mortal life split two ways, lived in shifts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Skin & Bones

It used to be that if either Jimmy or Castiel said "He", they'd both be referring to God. These days, early days of 2013, they're usually just talking about each other. 

Jimmy may have been born there, but eventually neither he or Cas can claim ownership. Both just tenants in the body that nobody feels at home in anymore. 

They both develop fidgets. Castiel cracks knuckles and he toys with his hands. Palm flat on a table and stretching fingers as far as they'll go, then a slow, deliberate, curling fist. His eyes intent on the entire process as it happens once, twice, ten times in a row.

Jimmy's a knee-bouncer. Incessant. Compulsive. Dean won't smack him on the back of the head for it, but Risa doesn't know the difference, so she does, every time. He just switches legs. 

 

Cas wakes to rolling nausea and a headache like a slow drill through his temples. When he tries to get up even his knees ache, and he doesn't know why. 

He's in their own bed, which is a plus. Fully dressed and lying across the mattress sideways, on top of the covers, feet on the floor like he'd backed up and fallen. The collar of their shirt is damp against the hollow of his throat. 

There are painkillers across the room, miles away on the dresser. On the way over he takes the time to scowl into the mirror. Somehow, the human face looking back smirks at him. 

"Petulant," he says out loud. "Like a freaking child." 

He's still clutching the wall halfway there when Dean enters, makes the rest of the trip for him, and drops the bottle in his hand. 

"Talking to yourself, Cas?" He says it way too loudly. Castiel makes a face.

"To my roommate," he says. The old joke. Shakes out pills blindly and swallows them dry. Lets Dean lead him back to the bed with his eyes closed, Dean's hand on the back of his neck. It's an animal thing, a posture of submission, it feels good. 

He could sleep, and not dream. The lull of it washes across his chest, but it's been a while, he's pretty sure, it feels like it's maybe been 24 hours or more. So he only half settles back down, and says, "What's on the docket?"

"Nothing specific." Dean sits down at the edge of the bed, then he's so still it's like he isn't there at all. Castiel kneads the sheets in his hands. "Need to track down some antibiotics, but. Hell." But they'd picked clean every possibility within a day's drive months ago.

"We can look farther afield. If we leave now," Cas sits up and the room skews. He clutches his hair. It's shorter than he remembers. "Did he cut our hair?"

"This can't keep happening." Dean's got a hand on their shin, still and warm, but he's looking across the room at nothing. 

"This?" 

For a while, Castiel and Jimmy had both and separately called the whole thing their _arrangement_. Soon they'd independently realized the label suggested that there might have been some amount of mutual agreement or negotiation involved, and their use of the term tapered off quickly. Now it was just this. The body between them. One mortal life split two ways, lived in shifts. 

"He's making you useless," Dean says.

"It's his prerogative." 

Castiel doesn't bother to argue the nuances of his use or disuse. He feels the smallness of the skin surrounding him, the weakness of the roiling guts, the wilting eyelids, the short hair and restless hands. The sphere of Jimmy's skull impenetrable as a circle of holy fire. 

Dean's hand is still resting on the leg, touching the body, but he isn't touching Cas and he isn't touching Jimmy. It's been explained, so Dean knows it, but wants anything else. He wants it to be a clean break, he wants an angel in the room. 

Cas pulls away to sit up properly, folds his legs. When he reaches under the bed there's a bottle waiting for him, and he doesn't question how he knew where to look. He holds it without drinking, glass cool and smooth when he runs a thumb along the neck. 

"Anyway," Castiel says, and smiles Jimmy's smile. "It's not like we're gonna grow old together."

 

Someone lets slip that when Jimmy goes to bed drunk, Cas wakes up with a hangover, and so Jimmy spends a good month and a half as far down the bottom of a bottle as he can get. His constitution may not be as strong or ineffable as the angel's once was, but he can get the job done. Chuck helps.

"It isn't that I blame him."

"Are you fucking kidding me? Even I sort of blame him, and I don't have to, you know." Chuck swerves the lip of his glass around, indicating their body. "Timeshare a meatsuit with him."

"Yeah, well." Jimmy bounces both legs briefly. Stops. Starts again. His knees are hurting and he doesn't know why. "He asked politely. And I said yes." _Twice_ , he could have added, but he likes to pretend that's a private matter. Chuck snorts indelicately. 

"Somehow I doubt he laid out the details."

But Chuck's wrong. Chuck wants a friend, someone who knows how culpable they all are, and so he says things he knows are wrong. 

Castiel had been a miracle for Jimmy, at first. A voice picked out from static, a glory he'd waited for his whole life. He'd barely had to say anything. _Will you trust me with your flesh, James Novak?_ , and it was yes. _Will you turn from your home, your family,_ but it was for such a purpose, so yes, yes. _Will you give yourself over to me wholly, to wield as I need you,_ and Jimmy only asked what it would feel like. Like a freaking child, he asked if it would hurt. So Jimmy takes another pull from his glass and tells Chuck.

"He told me it would feel like a dream." He rests his hands on restless knees. "He said, like a dream you're always dreaming, but never remember."

"Jesus. I didn't get to see that bit. I would'a written that down." Chuck doesn't ask why the fuck anyone would say yes to that.

Jimmy answers anyway, "It sounded like a good deal at the time. Now I wake up with grass stains on my knees. And I think he cut my hair." And then he can't stop laughing. Wheezing because it's like someone's been smoking with his throat. Dean's always saying their voices are different, but this _hurts_ and he can't stop laughing. "Fuck," he breathes. "Goddamn."

"You do a lot of cussing for a man of God." Chuck's just laughing because someone else is laughing, but _man of God_ , holy crap, now Jimmy's got hands holding his sides, legs have stopped moving because something needs to stay rooted, something. 

"Yeah well," he can finally say. "I've got a shitty life."


End file.
